By Donna Beth Weilenman
Martinez News-Gazette

A 58-year-old Benicia man who has been identified as the “NorCal Rapist” has been arrested. Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton, Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert and Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn made the joint announcement Friday morning.

They identified the suspect as Roy Charles Waller, a Benicia resident who for 25 years has been a safety specialist at the University of California, Berkeley, Office of Environment, Health and Safety.

Authorities said Waller was linked to the assaults through a genealogy DNA testing site. The connection was made 10 days ago, and from that day, Sacramento Police mounted an intense investigation that led to the man’s arrest, Schubert said.

“For 27 years, there has been one common thread, his DNA,” she said. Calling DNA “the silent witness to the truth,” Schubertsaid that truth came to light starting 10 days earlier through a “partnership of science and passionate police work.”

The NorCal Rapist committed a series of at least 10 assaults throughout Northern California, including Martinez, for 15 years starting in 1991. He appeared to focus on petite Asian women in their 20s and 30s, although some of his victims were white.

Assaults started in Rohnert Park in 1991, when he attacked a 21-year-old white woman. Other cases attributed to the NorCal Rapist include a 30-year-old white woman attacked in Vallejo in 1992; a 39-year-old Martinez Asian woman attacked in 1996; two 29-year-old Asian women attacked in Davis in 1997; a 21-year-old Asian woman attacked in Chico in 1998; a 22-year-old Asian woman attacked in Davis in 2000; and two Asian women, one 24 and the other 28, attacked in Sacramento in 2006.

Authorities said the rapist sometimes would enter their homes late at night, bind his victims and repeatedly assault them. He would search their homes and steal property, and occasionally he would force them to take him to automated teller machines to get money from their bank accounts.

Investigators said he once posed as a trick-or-treater to get into a victim’s house. In the Martinez attack, the man wore a skull mask during the Halloween attack, then the woman at work a few weeks later to apologize, officials said.

Officers reported that the assailant often wore a mask and sometimes was armed during his attacks.

In 2006, the NorCal Rapist tied two women in their homes. One woman managed to stabbed him, but that didn’t stop the attacks, authorities said.

While DNA evidence and photos led investigators to suspect Waller in those cases, they also had a description, provided by a victim in 2006 who was able to see her attacker despite being blindfolded.

She said he was white, appeared to be 37 to 40 years old and weighed 200 to 250 pounds with a prominent girth.

Investigators also learned the NorCal Rapist might be driving a white Toyota 4Runner with tinted windows.

Sacramento officers made the arrest Thursday as Waller arrived at the Cal Berkeley campus.

He faces 12 counts of forcible sexual assault against two women, accompanied by accusations he used a gun, according the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office’s felony complaint. The enhancements mean that if he’s convicted, he would be sentenced to life in prison. Other charges related to at least eight other sexual assault cases may be placed later.

The University of California Berkeley issued its own statement.

“We were shocked today to earn that a campus employee was arrested in connection with a series of rapes that occurred more than a decade ago in several Northern California Communities,” the statement said. “The employee, Roy Waller, was taken into custody by police and is on investigative leave.”

The statement cited both campus and Sacramento Police in saying no crimes appeared to have been committed at the university, although University of California Police Department in cooperation with Sacramento Police is looking to see if there is a connection between the NorCal Rapist and any open sexual assault cases. Bail has not been set. Waller is expected to be arraigned Monday.